Nagging Can Work. If You Do It Yourself.

Remember how your mother used to endlessly nag you about cleaning your room or doing your homework? How about your spouse, or a boss? Do they keep telling you to do something until you are so sick of it you could scream? Do you know why good old mommy used that technique? No, it wasn´t to raise her blood pressure. She did it because, eventually, it worked. At some point you caved in and cleaned up, if only to shut her up. It wasn´t necessarily the best or most productive approach she could have employed, but, used occasionally, it proved effective in motivating her teenager. That´s far from an easy task.

Stealing a page from the maternal handbook, there are times that I find it effective to nag myself to get things done. I can´t seem to get the tone of voice quite right, so instead I rely on some simple technology to help me with the nagging. I use the Tasks section of Outlook. If I have an unpleasant task that I need to get to, or an idea that needs to stay near the top of my consciousness, I just set it up as a new Task. I write down a few points that will remind me of what I need to do, or what I have been thinking. Then I set up a reminder (like an alarm which reminds you of the task) for two hours from when I am writing the Task.

Two hours later a reminder pops up on my computer screen complete with a bell and a blinking light that I can´t avoid. The computer is nagging me — bringing the task or idea back to the forefront of my mind. If I don´t want to deal with it then, I just press snooze and the reminder goes away. For two hours, that is. That´s when it pops up again. I could just dismiss the reminder and it would go away for good, but since I am nagging myself anyway, I stick to my own rules and either deal with it or press snooze.

This approach does a couple of things for me. First of all, it gets kind of annoying. The way I can make it go away is by doing whatever I have to do. That´s often enough motivation. More interestingly, though, because I know it is coming back in a couple of hours, the task or idea remains somewhere in my mind, and I end up processing it subconsciously. I will occasionally use the technique for an article idea that I have which isn´t quite complete, for example. After a day or two of the self-nagging, the missing pieces have often appeared and the ideas have often crystallized.

It´s not a graceful or sophisticated solution, but when used sparingly nagging yourself is surprisingly effective. Now go clean your room.

Stay Connected With Us

Subscribe to Newsletter

Real Business Owners,

Real Business Advice!

Sign up for practical, real-world solutions from successful business owners delivered to your inbox each Saturday morning. FREE. Over 50,000 entrepreneurs and businesses subscribe to our newsletter!